Quick Hits: Dodgers, Padres, Cespedes, Ramirez

The Dodgers signed 26-year-old right-hander Hideo Nomo on this date 17 years ago. Armed with an exceptionally deceptive delivery, Nomo struck out 236 batters and was named NL Rookie of the Year in 1995. Here are tonight's links, starting in L.A…

Michael Heisley, a billionaire who owns the Memphis Grizzlies of the NBA, is bidding on the Dodgers, Bill Shaikin of the LA Times reports. The 75-year-old led one of the 11 bids that made it through the first round of cuts, Shaikin writes.

The Padres have the top farm system in baseball even though they don’t have a top-25 prospect, ESPN.com’s Keith Law writes. The Rays and Blue Jays round out Law’s top three and the White Sox rank 30th.

Free agent left-hander Horacio Ramirez will throw in front of scouts in Arizona tomorrow, Jon Paul Morosi of FOX Sports tweets. The 32-year-old appeared in 12 games for the Angels last year, spending most of the season with their Triple-A affiliate.

Marlins officials met with Yoenis Cespedes in Miami today, showing him around the city and providing him with a tour of their new park, Joe Frisaro of MLB.com writes. Cespedes is currently blocked by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, though MLB has declared him a free agent.

The Bee’s Knees!… now that is something I didn’t expect to read by someone that goes by the name of Keith Law Sucks!
Very Funny. I am not sure how he came to the conclusion that the White Sox are 30th…I was thinking they should be 28th or 29th. Clearly not 30th.
Having Hawk Harrelson as your announcer should be worth something.

I can’t really put Fielder on a list of worst signings. The only reason is that I can’t differentiate between Detroit Tiger money and Mike Ilitch money.

The Fielder signing has about much of a chance of crippling the Tigers after 2015 as much as the franchise has of staying in the Ilitch family and continuing to pursue free agents, draft signees and trade targets without the Fielder deal having any influence.

Figures that the Marlins being uncharacteristically big spenders this offseason, their decisions would come into question.
Buehrle wasn’t signed as an alternative to Wilson. The Marlins needed a left-handed pitcher. Undoubtedly, they would’ve liked to have Wilson. But Buehrle has a good history with the new manager, has shown he’s a dependable pitcher, and is a soft-throwing lefty who kills hitters in the NL East. It’s how Jamie Moyer managed to stay pitching for so long. Plus, look at their rotation last season. They had three good starters: JJ, Nolasco, and Sanchez. Vasquez was more than likely retiring, and the fifth closer situation is better not talked about. Even if they signed Wilson, they would’ve needed another, preferably lefty starter in the rotation to compete with the Phillies and Braves, instead of throwing every fifth game to chance.

And any Marlins fan knows the closer situation. Phillies fans pan the Papelbon signing, but Papelbon would’ve been a tremendous improvement in Miami. The closer hasn’t been a strong position in the Marlins bullpen since ’03. In recent memory, we Marlins fans have had to put up with Matt Lindstrom, Kevin Gregg, and the closer formerly known as Leo Nunez. Having an established closer, and having that stability for three seasons, is a huge improvement for the Marlins bullpen. Plus, it allows potential future closers like Steve Cishek develop in the bullpen, possibly setting up for Bell, without the pressure of closing games.

Fielder – i believe the tigers went to panic mode when Vmart got hurt. just like it was stated in the fangraph. why didnt they spend and spread the money around instead of throwing it on one player. they will be hurting in the long run. but the tigers are tryin to wrap up a WS or two

Paps – well the madson signing looks like a steal now signing alot cheaper then papelbon.

I hate to break it to you, but that’s not a particularly constructive thing to say. If you want to make Sabermetricians look bad rather than insult them, how about try to prove them wrong? They’re judging the worst moves of the offseason, not by how much better the teams were made by the moves for 2012, but for the long term impact of the moves, the moves value per dollar, the risk associated with each move, ect. With that in mind, what exactly do you disagree with in their rankings?

Just because its part of the game doesn’t mean its correct or a valid indication of which team is better. The criteria (the playoff system) by which you are forming an opinion here is fundamentally flawed.

Yes, because you can tie an entire team’s performance to one man, especially when that man is not even the GM of the team…
Also, the Astro’s just recently offered Law a position, like a month ago or something.

This is a sabermetrician taking it to the extreme. Of course, anyone dealing in statistics will say that an unfavorable result is due to a “small sample size”.

Statistics are important, but at the end of the day the teams that make it are the teams that beat the odds by consistently performing well. In aggregate, statistics define teams and players. But in each individual game, it’s how each player steps up, or breaks down under pressure, that determines the outcome for that game.

The Cardinals are a winning team. They fared better under pressure than the Brewers who haven’t made it that far in recent seasons.

Oh boy, if we’re going to be persnickety then let’s at least make sure we know what we’re talking about, okay? You’re referring to his incorrect use of the word “you’re”, which is a contraction of “you are”, when he meant to use the word “your”, the possessive pronoun. However, in saying that he has incorrectly used a “homonym” you’re correcting him with a mistake of your own. “Homonym” literally means “same word”, as in a word with the same spelling and sound but a different meaning, such as “saw”. You should have used the word “homophone” which means “same sound”, as in a word that sounds the same but is spelled differently such as “sea” and “see”. Just a thought for the next time you try to snarkily correct someone.

You typically don’t get hired as a GM without working inside baseball in some capacity previously, perhaps that’s the reason.
Law tweeted that he had chosen to stay with ESPN, implying that he had turned the position down. The worst team in baseball would need the best talent in it’s front office to turn it around.

Any time you give a reliever more than two years, you did something terribly wrong. If someone comes along and wants to give Papelbon three years and $38 million, let them, it will probably hurt them later on down the road.

For an example look no further than the Billy Wagner situation from 2005. Phillies fans were crying a river when Wagner left, and happy as pigs in doo-doo when he broke down. What was lost on them was that 1. that happened, 2. Lidge did the same thing, 3. Papelbon just got a Brinks truck delievered to his house.

If you’re an owner worth several billion and you are 82 years old, what the heck do you care of Fielder is bad in years 7, 8, and 9? Chances are you won’t be around anyway. That in a nutshell is what’s wrong with baseball. With no salary cap, there’s nothing preventing a rogue owner who’s perspective is different than 29 other owners from overpaying drastically.

Yeah, because Brown’s agent is Boras, they are going to toy with him. I hope this wasn’t meant to be serious.

He was sent down because they got Hunter and need a LF for the future. Yes, they couldve kept him up in MLB and had him off the bench, but it made more sense for him to play everyday in AAA and learn LF.